Escape the shadow restaurant effect

There’s a fascinating – and dastardly – trend in the restaurant world: shadow restaurants.

Big chains like Frankie & Benny’s have created separate online restaurant brands that look nothing like big chains.

Instead, they’re positioned as small, independent specialists with cutesie names like BirdBox and Nonna’s Kitchen. The kind of place that appears to make one thing – e.g. burgers, pasta, chicken – brilliantly.

So while you think you’re ordering Nonna’s handmade tortellini, you’re actually getting mass-produced pasta made in the same ginormous kitchen that’s churning out everything from Korean wings to fajitas.

I told you it was dastardly.

So why are they resorting to these underhand tactics?

Well, first and foremost, to flood the market and squeeze out the real independents (as if it wasn’t hard enough for local restaurants these days).

But, also because studies show we’re drawn to local independents. We trust specialists. We like feeling that there’s a real person, craft or story behind what we’re buying.

There’s an emotional connection.

So rather than becoming more personal, some big brands are just manufacturing the appearance of personal.

And there’s an interesting parallel with how we’re communicating now with AI.

AI has made it ridiculously easy to flood the market with communication.

Words are cheaper than ever.

But increasingly, a lot of it feels like it came from the same enormous kitchen.

The same stuff over and over. All of it forgettable.

And just as we value small independent restaurants because they feel specialist and human, we increasingly value communication where we can sense the real live person behind it – the person with real emotions and a beating heart.

The good news is that you don’t need to fake it.

You don’t need underhand tricks to make AI-generated communication look personal.

You just need to make your communication actually personal!

That might mean something as simple as:

• asking a thoughtful question

• referring to something specific they said in your last conversation

• Including an observation, example or experience that only you could contribute

• being specific enough that the message clearly couldn’t have been written for 500 other people

• using an unusual word that AI definitely wouldn’t (I’m loving dastardly right now)

• Telling a weird story or making an unusual parallel that AI wouldn’t have thought of (yup, like shadow restaurants)

So don’t create the communication equivalent of a shadow restaurant.

Just give people the real thing: YOU!